About ASWA

The Australian Severe Weather Association was founded in late 1998 and incorporated with the NSW Department of Fair Trading in May 1999. Since then ASWA has flourished to over two hundred members throughout Australia and many members have joined from overseas. A wide variety of people have become members, including students, amateurs, storm chasers, weather observers and professional meteorologists.

ASWA was created for several reasons. Firstly, it enables people interested in any type of severe weather (thunderstorms, tropical cyclones to droughts and blizzards) to meet other people with similar interests. This often occurs at the monthly or bi-monthly state meetings - many members enjoy the opportunity to meet others with similar interests, especially when it comes to exchanging stories, photos and video footage. Meetings vary in their content, but often contain feature presentations (sometimes by guest speakers), comments and descriptions of previous recent significant weather setups and events and the opportunity to share video footage and photos of weather events.

The second reason ASWA was created was a community benefit - that is to assist in severe weather reporting. Currently ASWA focuses on severe thunderstorms (a prevalent threat in Australia), but there is no limit set for the scope that ASWA can cover. ASWA encourages its members to report severe thunderstorms and conduct local damage surveys so that this information can be forwarded onto the Bureau of Meteorology for the issuing of vital warnings and important database information that can lead to further research of severe weather related phenomena in Australia. In the future, ASWA hopes to continue this and report more information - many thunderstorms go unreported, and many areas have very little thunderstorm preparation. ASWA aims to assist in improving the thunderstorm reporting network and give information on how people can prepare for the thunderstorm season. ASWA also aims to extend this to all aspects of severe weather in the future.

Since ASWA's founding, ASWA has conducted several successful activities - these include a Bureau of Meteorology and ASWA combined storm spotter seminar, and the increasingly popular ASWA AGM weekend, which is an annual weekend with a variety of events that attracts many people from interstate to attend!

For more information on ASWA, feel free to contact a representative in your state, and they'll be happy to answer any questions! Visitors are also more than welcome to attend meetings, so feel free to attend one or more if you're still curious! There is a wide variety of members - ASWA membership isn't targeted at one audience - everyone is welcome to join ASWA and enjoy the benefits of becoming a member with the opportunity to be able to meet other people with a similar interest.

Also please read our Mission Statement and Code of Ethics for more information. Additionally, our Association Rules that are lodged with the NSW Department of Fair Trading are available for download in MS Word format.

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Now that you are registered, would you be interested in supporting ASWA financially?

ASWA is a not-for-profit organisation, run by volunteers. Our 'power' is therefor limited by the number of members that support us financially.

If you support ASWA financially, your money will go in to providing our members with new products and services that will benefit them in the world of severe weather.

We have a number of projects in the works at the moment, and we are continually looking for new projects we can undertake. Unfortunately most of these products require some sort of financial committment to acquire data from sources such as the Bureau of Meteorology. Your support will help us acquire these products which we can then process and provide to our members with a useable interface.

If you would like to support us, please click the link below. Our support subscription is only $33/yr.